Training Log Archive: barb

I have been thinking lately, from time to time, about getting older and beyond the having-babies-and-small-children phase.

I was awoken by my alarm this morning, from this dream: I have a baby, a third child. It is a wunderbaby: in a matter of days, it can walk. I show Dave; I'm pretty psyched. We are at some crowded function with other families. I show another mother. My baby has one weird leg, kind of flattened, but no matter - she can walk fine on it. Then I have a realization: that my baby may be different in another way. I ask the other mother if she can see the baby, and she says, no she can't. She's been humoring me. I realize that the baby is an elaborate hallucination. I sit there, holding this very real baby, reddish hair, wide open eyes, sweet little baby body tucked in my arms, knowing that she is a hallucination but experiencing her just the same. I ask Dave if he sees her, but I don't remember what he said.

Yesterday at Tufts I listened to a lecture that touched on the effects of sleep deprivation, including how the hypothalamus might send signals that put the brain into a mode having some of the characteristics of sleep while still awake. That must be where the hallucination element came from.

work-home

Clarity of thinking was a side effect cited to me by my friend who tried this elimination diet thing, at least for the first couple of weeks where you are eliminating things from your diet. I guess people fasting claim the same thing, but I'm unlikely to ever find that out. Well, I don't feel particularly clearer, but I did have what might have been an unusually cogent conversation with a coworker this morning. I even remembered some of the science presented in two of the talks I attended yesterday, including actual gene names. That might be unusual. Forgetting has been my strong suit lately.

Day two. Ate quite a lot actually, just no caffeine, wheat products, etc. Rice cakes, that green juice, herbal tea, sushi, rice/chicken/broccoli dinner. Feeling kind of hefty.